The outcome of cutting, tearing, needle insertion and similar operations which require topological changes, or contact detection, is significantly affected by the microstructure of the material (discontinuities, holes, interfaces) remaining some of the most difficult surgical gestures to simulate. We are interested in the development of a numerical tool capable of the interactive simulation of surgical cutting using a multi-domain lattice-continuum approach. Around the cutting region, a mesoscopic discrete lattice approach suitable for initiation of cuts and subsequent tears is used. The remaining regions can be modeled by a continuum approach or through model reduction approaches based on pre-computations. The algorithms are implemented within the SOFA framework which is targets real-time computations, with an emphasis on medical simulation and the work is being performed in collaboration with the group of Dr Hadrien Courtecuisse and Dr Stéphane Cotin in Strasbourg.

The final goal of this project is to simulate in real-time the cutting of heterogeneous of soft-tissues using two-scale model instead of using one macroscopic model as in Courtecuisse, H., Allard, J., Kerfriden, P., Bordas, S. P. a, Cotin, S., & Duriez, C. (2014). Real-time simulation of contact and cutting of heterogeneous soft-tissues. Medical Image Analysis, 18(2), 394–410. doi:10.1016/j.media.2013.11.001 [Download].

The work is partially funded by USIAS – University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study. Details can be found here.

The work is being performed by Huu Phuoc Bui within Legato team led by Stéphane P.A. Bordas in direct collaboration with Stéphane Cotin, Hadrien Courtecuisse and Michel de Mathelin in MIMESIS and AVR teams in Strasbourg.